It's that weekend again! The best weekend if you're all for movies. Or the worst weekend if you're all for movies.
The Academy Awards is here once more, doing its typical waiting for the rest to take stage before appearing shtick, a la Jarvier Bardem in Skyfall.
Of course, the main prize, as always remains Best Picture. We will talk about the Director and Adapted Screenplay, and of course there will be endless and tiresome social media debates about Best Actors and whatnot. But the main prize is the main prize.
The next Best Picture winner will be the 25th of this century. So, how do the other 24 compare with each other.
To answer the questions; Is this list biased? Heavily. Is this bias in favour of a sports-ish movie that features in actor who plays a cop in a Christopher Nolan in the very early 2000s? Maybe. Is Kathryn Bigelow's movie the lowest-ranked here?
The Hurt Locker
Oh yes. Not exactly the ‘worst’ movie on this list, but you know why you’re here, The Hurt Locker. Plus, if the Academy wanted to award the Best Picture to a revisionist war movie from the US perspective, this was the same year as Inglorious Basterds.
Green Book
Should go without saying. It’s only second-last on the list because there’s a Kathryn Bigelow flick about US troops feeling bad while occupying another country.
The King’s Speech
Simply put, in the year of Inception and The Social Network, this won Best Picture.
Crash
If the aim of this Paul Haggis flick was to reflect interconnectivity and a concept of lives being constantly intertwined, using Los Angeles as a hub for that, it gets muddled up in being an utterly absurd ‘racist people can be good people too’ liberal individualist mess, among other things. And none of those things excuse why this movie is so boring.
A Beautiful Mind
Looks like a feel-good movie about mental health, until you realise that its depiction of mental struggles (especially in the schizophrenic) are super weird and borderline offensive. Great performances all-round from the cast, but there are so many problems here.
Slumdog Millionaire
A great movie to watch in your pre-teens, before attaining any sort of development and realising many things. Why is Danny Boyle’s attempted depiction of wealth disparity and struggle in India hell-bent on simply making everyone in the country dirty and ragged? Why is nothing actually remotely developed in the movie, story-wise? What changes Salim’s motivation in the end? How on earth did the guy who did Trainspotting do this? A fantastical tale to rival all fantastical tales, where Dev Patel’s performance does nothing to cover up the fact that, stripped to its core, Slumdog Millionaire is a movie heavily predicated on the ‘Damsel in Distress’ trope.
Argo
It’s better than the movies below it, and has some great acting. That’s pretty much it.
Nomadland
Great acting. Well-shot. Great directing as well. But in watching Nomadland, you never let go of the feeling that something is missing, not least in terms of portraying Fern’s life before and during her nomadic adventures. Probably a worthy winner in 2020, but still feels a tad undercooked, and rather forgettable.
Chicago
On performance alone, this 2002 Best Picture winner would probably be number one. Such is quality that Renee Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones bring on screen in this musical. But Chicago feels a touch wasted, because its rather unique premise gets a very bland execution.
The Artist
Feels like a tribute to a bygone era of cinema. The Artist did seem like it had a lot to say, but in the end, gave very little. Its filming technique and style kind of undercuts moments that would have been profound in another format (there are too many moments when George Valentin is emotionally struck while recalling situations that the filming style robbed the audience of engaging with). And its entire artist-looking-out-of-place-in-a-new-era mantra defeats itself in the end, leaving you with the question; they gave this Best Picture over Moneyball?
CODA
Like The Artist, CODA did seem to have watch that it wanted to say, and proposes a rather different and important premise. But much of its message is lost, largely because it doesn’t really give it; the tale of familial responsibility feels shabby, and the class and exploitation angle doesn’t really go anywhere. In the end, CODA feels like a profound movie trapped inside a feel-good Disney-esque Young Adult flick with an insistence on assuring its audience that it would be okay in the end, without really saying how or why.
The Departed
For starters, it’s odd how arguably Martin Scorsese’s least-heralded (and maybe least impressive) movie is the one that wins the Best Picture from his catalogue. That’s by no means a knock on The Departed, its hard-hitting sense of thrill and drama makes for a brilliant watch, and the shrouded sense of secrecy surrounding the protagonist’s actions sustains tension for virtually all of the movie. Cons? Jack Nicholson’s performance feels a bit too much, Matt Damon feels a bit too little, and Scorsese should have given a Best Picture winner long before this.
Gladiator
Hard-hitting, full-blown, no holds barred. Gladiator is well and truly peak action, with performances that don’t miss and such set design that makes this Ridley Scott’s finest hour of the 21st century. There’s obviously no doubt that much of this movie can be overblown, and its storytelling is a tad weak, but for cinematic feeling, it ticks all the boxes.
Oppenheimer
Surprisingly a better movie than many predicted (a bit par for the course for Christopher Nolan). It’s the Nolan-ism that turns what should have been a straightforward story about the father of the A-Bomb into quite riveting tales of loss, guilt, power, envy, and so much more. Its window into J.R. Oppenheimer is matched by the performance of Cillian Murphy to bring him to life. Not flawless, but much more enjoyable and watchable than expected.
Million Dollar Baby
There are questions about what Million Dollar Baby presents from a social perspective (par for the course for Clint Eastwood), and those questions shouldn’t go away. Its nigh-on ableist rhetoric takes some glimmer off its sense of visual storytelling via objects and mere actions. But it still has a great sense of visual storytelling via objects and mere actions, and while even its shocking twist leads it down a questionable path as well, its shocking twist subverts expectations of what was looking like a typical feel-good sports drama. Extra points for Hillary Swank’s incredible performance in this.
The Shape of Water
At the heart of it, this is a proper romance, embodied by a magnificent performance from Sally Hawkins, alongside equally-impressive showings from Octavia Butler and Michael Sheen. But it really is Hawkins and Doug Jones that bring this to life, saying barely anything, but telling us nearly everything. Loses points for its weird and unnecessary ‘Evil Communist Soviets’ angle, though.
Birdman
It would obviously be ridiculous to suggest that this was by any means the best work of 2014, or the 2014 Best Picture nominees. Sometimes, Birdman, from a story perspective, seems unsure of where to go, and its ending is more shock than story. But forget all that, and adore the cinematography and sound design from this Alejandro Inarritu movie. Worth the prize for those alone.
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
In the history of feel-good ‘good will triumph over evil’ fantasy works, this franchise is the apex mountain. And the third movie really brings that together. Does too much with the Russian Doll endings, but that’s beside the point. Has there been any other movie that won Best Picture this century with so many notable scenes to point at? Probably not. A truly cinematic masterpiece.
Spotlight
If there’s ever been a better Best Picture that hits all the right notes for great acting, you should watch that too. Spotlight brings a true tale to life in the most incredible way you could think of. The way we watch see characters faces – without words – go from recalcitrant to vulnerable, from professional to passionate is astonishing. How even bland expressions communicate the point of scenes is something to marvel at. Incredible character likeness from the cast, not least Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo, plus some perfect calm in acting by Liev Schrieber? Worth the admission money.
Everything Everywhere All At Once
In the age where it started to really become worryingly clear that filmmaking was heading down an incredibly formulaic ‘box office algorithm’ path, that we got something of this nature in the 2020s is remarkable. Everything Everywhere All At Once is by no means perfect, but it’s bold, adventurous, fun, in-depth, and achieves the nigh-on impossible of having incredibly sci-fi and fantasy layers while also being remarkably grounded and rooted in everyday realities, familial strife, and seeking a sense of identity. Top marks.
12 Years a Slave
Powerful, sobering, for its obvious reasons and beyond. What makes 12 years a Slave a harrowing masterpiece isn’t just depiction of the brazen and overtly brutal aspects of slavery, but the parts around it. It’s not the whipping and the hanging, but rather the passers-by getting on with their day while its ongoing, reflecting the mundanity of it all, and how normalised and workaday it all looked. It’s seeing Solomon North – when he was first a ‘free man’ – turn his back and go about his day as an enslaved person that tries to escape is taken. It’s the cinematography depicting freedom is near unimaginable for the enslaved. All that, and some great acting from everyone involved.
Parasite
What hasn’t been said about Parasite? The undeniable depiction of class disparity that seems so run-of-the-mill, you almost forget how inhumane it is? The faux-aspirations of upward financial mobility that rarely ever happens? The performances? The use of sound? The plot twist to rival all plot twists? What hasn’t been said about this masterpiece?
No Country for Old Men
Is this Yin to the Fargo Yang of the Coen Brothers? Maybe. Maybe not. But it’s definitely a claim worth examining, as, if Fargo is a movie that creates so much character depth in such short runtime, No Country for Old Men gets even better with its increased length. Never has a movie portrayed three characters who you’d admire better never ever want to be. Never has a movie used characters to portray elements like chance, luck, fate, opportunism, and identity as well as this movie did. And never has three actors stood out in the same work as much as Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, and Tommy Lee Jones did here. A Best Picture winner, and then some.
Moonlight
You could make the case that Moonlight is the greatest movie of all time (and frankly, one ought to just stop here). It’s not just its depiction of queerness and how much performative masculinity is borne out trauma, loss, and/or a need to play a role lumped on you by society. It’s also a movie about the life racialised violence knocks you into, how much of your path is largely pre-determined by your class position. And, Moonlight also stands out as a movie that knows how to make the perfect use of silence. Never has the sound of nothing being so profound. Definitely the most worthy Best Picture of this century. Maybe any century. Maybe the greatest movie of all time.
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